Daniel Keenan is descended from Ngati Te Whiti ki Te Atiawa. He attended Pungarehu Primary, New Plymouth Boys’ High School, and Massey University after being born in New Plymouth.
Daniel Keenan has experience in the public sector, working mostly for the Department of Maori Affairs between 1981 and 1989. He went back to Massey University after the department was shut down in 1989, where he earned his PhD in history in 1994. He was hired as a New Zealand history instructor and promoted to senior lecturer in 2004.
He was a founding member of the Maori historians’ network, Te Pouhere Korero. He received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Award in 1995 to further his research at the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Center for the History of the American Indian.
A second Fulbright Senior Scholar Award was given to Daniel Keenan in 2009 so that she could teach New Zealand history at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
On the history of the Maori and New Zealand, Daniel Keenan has written extensively. A Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Award was given to his most recent publication, Te Whiti O Rongomai and the Resistance of Parihaka, in 2016. He now works as a writer full-time and resides in Whanganui.